So I have been brewing a bunch of lighter pale ales and IPAs and I am curious about a medium gravity pale ale with a bit of rye. I found a couple of different recipes and borrowed aspects of each. Let me know what you think.

The recipe looks good to me. I add rye to the majority of my pale ale recipes, usually 20-30%. Your grain bill is pretty similar to a Amarillo Rye I brew, it is just higher gravity with more base malt and higher percent of rye. I also use Munich and victory. I think your hop schedule looks good, I use Chinook and Amarillo at a proportional rate to your recipe. I think you will end up with a balanced beer with slight rye character and complementary hop flavor/aroma.

The mash was really easy, added .4 lbs of rice hulls and didn't have any issues with clumping or stuck mash. I used strike water at 172 degrees and the mash settled in at 154 degrees...by 30 minutes the mash was holding at 151. I used 60 minutes mash and then started my sparge. I should note that I forgot to use any water amendment, big mistake! Our water comes from one of the cleanest rivers in the nation, it has crystal clear water with almost no dissolved solids and only about 20ppm total hardness. It really helps in my area to add some chalk and gypsum to the strike water to help PH buffer. Oh well...life goes on.

The boil was uneventful. I stir. I wait. I stir. I wait. Upon conclusion of the boil I always kill the flame and then making sure to never splash into the beer I mist the outside of my keg to knock the boil out of the wort. With the boil gone but with a the temp maintained above 160 I steep my aroma hops for about 15 to 20 minutes and then start the chilling process.

The gravity @ 1.049 instead of 1.054, came out a little low. I attribute this to my system being scaled better for 10 gallon batch and to my lack or water amendments. In addition, I really didn't monitor my batch sparging. Any real schedule would have been better than just kinda winging it like I did, but I was playing it loose.

Looking to try fermenting this at a lower temp than I have tried before...essentially I would like to keep it around 61-62. I have been fighting some beers that fermented too high and some of the strange off flavors they were kicking have been hard to eliminate or hide. I was happy that even starting this beer at 60 degrees I saw strong fermentation at 8 hours. By 24 hours I had a huge pillow of head and a little bit of crap pushing out the blow-off tube. Apparently my yeast is healthy; Thanks Wyeast. Go Oregon.

My beer turned out pretty darn well. I am still letting it age under keg pressure for another week or two while I finish off my IPA. I did pour one tonight and found that I have a little more cloudiness than I expected but the fermentation is otherwise quite clean.

In terms of flavor I am picking up on mostly the cascade hop with the really strong citrus flavors. The Columbus is strong as well because of the dry hop addition, it offers a somewhat harsh and vegetal hop flavor. The rye is definitely present giving the beer some sweetness and some spiciness. Interesting. I think removing the victory malt in preference of some crystal 20 in a slightly higher percentage might make for a more balanced beer.